6 ms·

Irrelevant ads are better for customers because they dont work as well.

manigandham 8y ago
That makes no sense. Marketing is about efficiently matching customers with products filling their needs and wants. Advertising is the communication that makes this system work and relevancy is a core factor. Irrelevant ads only waste time and money and work against both sides.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I’ve got a novel idea. Publishers can make content that people are willing to pay for and charge money.
  - codezero 8y ago
    They’ve tried. It isn’t as simple as that. If it were it’d happen.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      It works for newspapers that people care about -- the WSJ, NYT, and I'm sure there are others. Ads aren't working too well either with the increasing use of ad blockers -- even on mobile and Google and FB sucking all of the ad revenue up.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    It's not novel, it's been used for centuries. The industry is a lot smarter than you think. But people don't value news and can't pay anywhere near enough compared to what they consume. Ads allow people to read what they want, when they want, for how much they want, regardless of publisher name or how much wealth they personally have.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      How’s that whole get lots of customers and sell ads working out? Are they making the $40 per month per user that the WSJ gets?
      - manigandham 8y ago
        It's working out fine. 90% of the content and services on the internet is paid for by ads. There's also cycles. TV went through OTA to cable bundles to a-la-carte streaming and is now heading back to ads and bundles as people have reached their limit on payments. Music is in the bundle stage. New formats like podcasts are still in the early ad stage. Online publishers are at the peak of the direct payments stage and heading to news bundles next, which you mentioned yourself. Regardless of the cycle, ads pay for the most and are almost always part of the deal because it's incredibly hard to sustain content production with rising costs at any price that consumers actually want to pay.
        scarface74 8y ago
        If it’s “working fine” then why are all of the newspapers struggling with digital except the ones that are actually charging customers? https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/
        manigandham 8y ago
        Adblockers. It is technical hammer that breaks the content-for-ads trade-off. If there was an extension that you can install with 1-click that lets you order from Amazon.com for free, would people not use it? Does that suddenly mean that Amazon is no longer valid as a business? These companies will either use technical countermeasures, or switch to different revenue models, or go out of business. But individual producers don't change the fact that most content is paid for by ads, powered by 2 of the biggest companies on the planet.
        scarface74 8y ago
- anoncake 8y ago
  It isn't. Marketing and advertising in particular is about making people buy the product that the company paying for the advertising wants to sell. It uses lies and emotional manipulation to make people think that they need that product. Helping customers fulfill their needs and wants is not helpful when these needs and wants would not even exist without ads. This is particularly obvious for ads for stuff like coke: Everyone knows coke exists. Ads for it do not inform at all, they only manipulate. If ads were useful to the customer, then there would be no need to embed them with useful services, let alone to force customers to expose themselves to them by turning of their ad blockers. It would not make sense to give customers a choice between paying for a given service or suffering from ads: Those are signs that the value of ads for customers is negative. If it were positive, you could even charge extra for them. Despite being a very bad method of informing customers, ads might be defensible if they were the only one. But they aren't. Classifieds may technically be ads, but they differ fundamentally from others in that customers specifically seek them out. That indicates that customers do get value from them. Another suitable method of informing customers are newspapers and magazines, especially specialized magazines and ones like Consumer Reports. Their interests are aligned with the customer because it's the customer who pays them. Admittedly, there is a problem with those publications: Most of them also contain ads. That means advertisers can influence their reporting with the threat, spoken or unspoken, to no longer advertise in them. This is another way ads make products worse and obviously not an argument in their favor.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    That's a conflation of several different things and redefining marketing from the actual definition to be what you want doesn't make a good argument. Lying in ads is illegal and "manipulation" is just another word for influence, the same as when you recommend something to your friend. Whether you trust a brand or not is no different than whether you trust a friend which is why we have branding and customer loyalty in the first place. Advertising is communication and has no inherent usefulness; the value is in the outcome. The user isn't suffering, they're choosing a way to convert attention to currency as a way of paying for the content they want. It's a choice they willing make and having the option to transact that way is a net positive for both sides.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Relevant ads are worse for me as they are most likely to change my behaviour. My interests don’t really align with those of the advertisers.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    If you're interests don't align then they wouldn't be relevant. You're also in charge of your behavior, no ad can make you do anything. As I stated before, irrelevant ads are the #2 complaint by users.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      >no ad can make you do anything That is clearly wrong as advertisers wouldn't knowingly pay for ads that have no effect.

That makes no sense. Marketing is about efficiently matching customers with products filling their needs and wants. Advertising is the communication that makes this system work and relevancy is a core factor. Irrelevant ads only waste time and money and work against both sides.

scarface74 8y ago
I’ve got a novel idea. Publishers can make content that people are willing to pay for and charge money.
- codezero 8y ago
  They’ve tried. It isn’t as simple as that. If it were it’d happen.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    It works for newspapers that people care about -- the WSJ, NYT, and I'm sure there are others. Ads aren't working too well either with the increasing use of ad blockers -- even on mobile and Google and FB sucking all of the ad revenue up.
- manigandham 8y ago
  It's not novel, it's been used for centuries. The industry is a lot smarter than you think. But people don't value news and can't pay anywhere near enough compared to what they consume. Ads allow people to read what they want, when they want, for how much they want, regardless of publisher name or how much wealth they personally have.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    How’s that whole get lots of customers and sell ads working out? Are they making the $40 per month per user that the WSJ gets?
    - manigandham 8y ago
      It's working out fine. 90% of the content and services on the internet is paid for by ads. There's also cycles. TV went through OTA to cable bundles to a-la-carte streaming and is now heading back to ads and bundles as people have reached their limit on payments. Music is in the bundle stage. New formats like podcasts are still in the early ad stage. Online publishers are at the peak of the direct payments stage and heading to news bundles next, which you mentioned yourself. Regardless of the cycle, ads pay for the most and are almost always part of the deal because it's incredibly hard to sustain content production with rising costs at any price that consumers actually want to pay.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        If it’s “working fine” then why are all of the newspapers struggling with digital except the ones that are actually charging customers? https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/
        manigandham 8y ago
        Adblockers. It is technical hammer that breaks the content-for-ads trade-off. If there was an extension that you can install with 1-click that lets you order from Amazon.com for free, would people not use it? Does that suddenly mean that Amazon is no longer valid as a business? These companies will either use technical countermeasures, or switch to different revenue models, or go out of business. But individual producers don't change the fact that most content is paid for by ads, powered by 2 of the biggest companies on the planet.
        scarface74 8y ago
anoncake 8y ago
It isn't. Marketing and advertising in particular is about making people buy the product that the company paying for the advertising wants to sell. It uses lies and emotional manipulation to make people think that they need that product. Helping customers fulfill their needs and wants is not helpful when these needs and wants would not even exist without ads. This is particularly obvious for ads for stuff like coke: Everyone knows coke exists. Ads for it do not inform at all, they only manipulate. If ads were useful to the customer, then there would be no need to embed them with useful services, let alone to force customers to expose themselves to them by turning of their ad blockers. It would not make sense to give customers a choice between paying for a given service or suffering from ads: Those are signs that the value of ads for customers is negative. If it were positive, you could even charge extra for them. Despite being a very bad method of informing customers, ads might be defensible if they were the only one. But they aren't. Classifieds may technically be ads, but they differ fundamentally from others in that customers specifically seek them out. That indicates that customers do get value from them. Another suitable method of informing customers are newspapers and magazines, especially specialized magazines and ones like Consumer Reports. Their interests are aligned with the customer because it's the customer who pays them. Admittedly, there is a problem with those publications: Most of them also contain ads. That means advertisers can influence their reporting with the threat, spoken or unspoken, to no longer advertise in them. This is another way ads make products worse and obviously not an argument in their favor.
- manigandham 8y ago
  That's a conflation of several different things and redefining marketing from the actual definition to be what you want doesn't make a good argument. Lying in ads is illegal and "manipulation" is just another word for influence, the same as when you recommend something to your friend. Whether you trust a brand or not is no different than whether you trust a friend which is why we have branding and customer loyalty in the first place. Advertising is communication and has no inherent usefulness; the value is in the outcome. The user isn't suffering, they're choosing a way to convert attention to currency as a way of paying for the content they want. It's a choice they willing make and having the option to transact that way is a net positive for both sides.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Relevant ads are worse for me as they are most likely to change my behaviour. My interests don’t really align with those of the advertisers.
- manigandham 8y ago
  If you're interests don't align then they wouldn't be relevant. You're also in charge of your behavior, no ad can make you do anything. As I stated before, irrelevant ads are the #2 complaint by users.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    >no ad can make you do anything That is clearly wrong as advertisers wouldn't knowingly pay for ads that have no effect.